adaptation and mitigation in agriculture

Coping with a

changing climate:

considerations for

adaptation and mitigation in agriculture

ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT SERIES ENVIRONMENT CLIMATE CHANGE BIOENERGY MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT

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Front cover photos

Back cover photos

Background image in this page

from left to right:

© S. Ramasamy | © FAO/L. Dematteis | © FAO/G. Napolitano (see internal pages for captions)

from left to right:

© FAO/J. Isaac | © FAO/G. Bizzarri | © FAO/L.Grisolla | © S.Ramasamy (see internal pages for captions)

Illustration elaborated from

“L’Encyclopédie Diderot et D’Alembert”

Coping with a

changing climate:

considerations for adaptation and mitigation in agriculture

Michael H. Glantz

Consortium for Capacity Building,

University of Colorado and Climate Affairs, LLC, Boulder, Colorado, USA

René Gommes Selvaraju Ramasamy

Environment, Climate Change and Bioenergy Division Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Rome, Italy ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT SERIES ENVIRONMENT CLIMATE CHANGE BIOENERGY MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT

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© FAO 2009

Over one billion people around the world are undernourished because they lack easy and consistent access to affordable food. Climate change is already affecting all four dimensions of food security: food availability, food accessibility, food utilization and food systems stability. The impacts are both short-term, through more extreme weather events, and long- term through changing temperatures and precipitation patterns. Rural communities and livelihoods face immediate risk of increased crop failure, loss of livestock, and reduced availability of marine, aquaculture and forest products and new patterns of pests and diseases outbreak. People living in fragile ecosystems such as coasts, floodplains, mountain areas and semi-arid landscapes are most at risk.

Agriculture, forestry and land use can also contribute to climate change mitigation through reducing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration. FAO promotes integration of adaptation and mitigation into food security efforts. However, true progress will require comprehensive approaches, close cooperation, synergy and coordination among the policy planners, institutions and local communities.

Adaptation and mitigation strategies should contribute to poverty reduction and at the same time must benefit the most vulnerable communities without harming the environment. Informing about climate change impacts, vulnerability patterns, coping and adaptive capacity as well as facilitating location specific adaptation and mitigation practices are of central concern.

The uncertainties related to climate change impacts and vulnerabilities are often considered as an impediment for concrete and immediate action.

However, uncertainty is a fundamental component of climate impacts and cannot, in itself, be used as an excuse for inaction. This document elaborates on issues of less-than-perfect information on climate impacts and vulnerabilities, and need for better informed decisions on “resilient adaptation” by merging adaptation, mitigation and prevention strategies. It offers new perspectives

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for policy-makers, institutions, societies and individuals on improved ways of identifying most at-risk communities and “best practices” of coping with current climate variability and extreme climate events.

We aim at contributing to approaches and considerations for adaptation and mitigation and improved ways of integrating present-day “best practices”

with the longer-term strategies to cope with uncertain future climates.

Peter Holmgren Director Environment, Climate Change and

Bioenergy Division, FAO

Changing climatic conditions are projected to affect food security from the local to global level. The predictability in rainy season patterns will be reduced, while the frequency and intensity of severe weather events such as floods, cyclones and hurricanes will increase; other predicted effects will include prolonged drought in some regions; and water shortages; and changes in the location and incidence of pest and disease outbreaks. Growing demand for biofuels from crops can place additional pressure on the natural resource base. New policy driven options are required to address the emerging challenges of attaining improved food security.

The first two chapters of this book presents historical evidence of relationship between climate and food security, as well as current challenges of world food security posed by climate change. The “introduction” chapter highlights the need for baseline diagnostics on impacts, vulnerability and resiliency patterns and decision making under uncertainty. Chapter 2 elaborates on the impacts of climate change on agriculture and stresses how to effectively address these impacts, focusing on ecosystem goods and services and social well being. The chapter on “the setting: baseline information” underlines that mapping, such as capacity to cope in a country, is as important as mapping vulnerabilities to climate variability and change.

Climate change adaptation strategies are now a matter of urgency. Many potential adaptation options in agriculture have mitigation synergies, and similarly, several mitigation options for climate change could generate significant benefits for both food security and adaptation. Chapter 3 on

“Adaptation and mitigation” introduces the “four laws of ecology” and presents their continuing relevance to policy-makers when they identify, develop and implement adaptation and mitigation strategies.

In regard to climate change and the likelihood that future characteristics of climate will change in unknown ways, the existing “best practices” should be viewed as providing a source of tactical short-term response to a changing environment as opposed to untested strategic long-term responses.

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Chapter 4 on “What to do at the national level” elaborates the fact that climate impacts and response mechanisms in the near term future are likely to be similar to those of the recent past, barring any abrupt changes in the atmosphere’s local and global climatic characteristics.

Most climate impacts of concern to policy-makers are local. Adaptation and mitigation measures, which require poverty reduction and food security, must be customized to benefit the neediest of the needy. Chapter 5 on

“Short-term and long-term policy options” focuses on decision making under uncertainties; improved ways of identifying most at-risk communities and coping with current climate variability and extremes; and improved ways of integrating present-day tactical and “best practice” responses with the longer-term strategic needs.

The conclusion has key take-home messages from the FAO high level conference on “World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy” are presented along with closing thoughts about having “no adaptation recommendations without ramifications” as well as suggestions for policy-driven strategic thinking about adaptation to and mitigation of climate change with a focus on improved food security.

Coping with a changing climate:

Considerations for adaptation and mitigation in agriculture

by Michael H. Glantz, René Gommes, Selvaraju Ramasamy 116 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, 13 pictures

FAO Environment and Natural Resources Service Series, No. 15 – FAO, Rome, 2009 Keywords:

Climate change, bioenergy, food security, adaptation and mitigation in agriculture, coping with climate change in agriculture, short term and long term policy options, policy decisions under uncertainty.

This series replaces the following:

Environment and Energy Series; Remote Sensing Centre Series; Agrometeorology Working Paper A list of documents published in the above series and other information can be found at:

www.fao.org/nr and www.fao.org/climatechange

Abstract

Executive Summary Acronyms

1 - INTRODUCTION Changing perspectives

The need for baseline diagnostics

2 - THE SETTING: BASELINE INFORMATION Impacts

The IPCC 4th assessment

The IPCC 4th assessment and food security A climate change challenge for society:

riding the variability curve

Does climate impacts history have a future?

Aspects of vulnerability Ecosystem changes Vulnerability patterns Resiliency patterns

Rates and processes of change Virtual water and ghost acres

Global warming and disappearing seasons Approaches to impact assessments

Forecasting by analogy: the future is here for those who wish to see it

Making hotspots visible

The hotspots pyramid and adaptation areas of concern (AOC) Creeping environmental change

Global warming as a creeping environmental change The future is arriving earlier than expected:

2020 is the new 2050 v

xi xiii

1 1 4

7 7 7 8 9

11 11 11 17 18 19 19 20 23 23

24 26 28 29 30

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3 - ADAPTATION AND MITIGATION Definitions

The “four laws of ecology”

Food security and the “four laws of ecology”

Adaptation Mitigation

In pursuit of resilient adaptation to climate change and its impacts

SWOC/T assessment of scenarios for adaptation Scenarios

Priority setting

Foreseeability and the precautionary principle

Knowable surprises: surprises that shouldn’t be surprising Invisible boundaries: traditional conflicts involving

agriculture

Invisible boundaries: water-related traditional conflicts and controversies

Invisible boundaries: food, energy and climate Agriculture-related invisible boundaries are shifting Winning and losing in agriculture under a warmer

atmosphere

Biofuels and early warning systems

4 - WHAT TO DO AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL Today’s “best practices” may not be enough

“Ordinary” knowledge about food security

“Once is not enough”

A step beyond: mitigating the impacts of adaptation The marine environment and global warming:

implications

Ignorance vs. “Ignore-ance”

5 - SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM POLICY OPTIONS All climate impacts of concern to policymakers are local Working with change, not against it

Approaching adaptation and mitigation planning with eyes wide open

Adaptation and mitigation strategies as outputs 33

33 33 34 35 36 43

43 44 45 45 46 47 49

50 53 54 56

59 59 60 61 62 63 65

67 67 69 70 73

Why some solutions to achieving food security are known but not applied

Key take-home messages from the fao high level conference

A “reality check”

6 - A CONCLUDING THOUGHT:

NO ADAPTATION RECOMMENDATIONS WITHOUT RAMIFICATIONS

7 - REFERENCES

8 - ANNEX

Climate change and food security Food insecurity

Agriculture’s role in mitigating climate change 82

83 86 89

92

97 97 98 99

©FAO/L. Dematteis

BANANA CROP DESTROYED BY HURRICANE MITCH (1998) IN HONDURAS

Climate change including extreme events such as storms and floods is making it even more difficult to grow and harvest produce from the land and threatens food security.

n This report is an expanded version of a paper that was originally drafted to encourage participants to the FAO Expert Meeting on Adaptation and Mitigation to provide examples from their regions, sectors and disciplines to reinforce or challenge, as appropriate, the concepts presented in order to improve policy-makers’ understandings of and preparations for coping with both the causes and the impacts of climate change on food security.

n The overarching goal in societal responses to climate change for the sake of enhancing food security must be a hybrid strategy, merging adaptation, mitigation and even prevention to produce an overall strategy of “resilient adaptation”.

n Governments must decide how they want to systematically think about and then undertake adaptation and mitigation activities. The inherent issues related to national decision making must be evaluated to determine if governments are equipped to cope with the dynamic nature of the impacts of climate change. In other words, are governments able and ready to address twenty-first century climate change problems that are not covered under current policies and programmes?

n Policy-makers are now being pressed to cope with a changing climate, from its anthropogenic causes to its impacts on food security. In this task, they are not unarmed: They can rely on information, knowledge and experience derived from historical accounts of the impacts of climate, water and weather as well as scenarios derived from global and regional modeling activities.

n Many adaptation and mitigation actions to cope with climate change causes and impacts are worth undertaking in their own right.

n Many of the environmental changes that are occurring and those that are likely to occur in the future as a result of climate change are incremental and “slow onset,” but they are cumulative. Policy-makers must improve the ways they choose to deal with such creeping changes in the environment as those changes will increasingly influence food security in negative ways.

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n A significant number of examples exist of successful and of unsuccessful responses to changes in what we today consider to have been our

“normal” climate of the past several decades. Examples of such responses are illustrative of societal vulnerabilities and resiliencies in the face of change, and they serve as a measure of societies’ adaptive capacities over time.

n The numerous existing controversies and conflicts in agriculture, forestry and fisheries will most likely be affected by climate change.

These controversies and conflicts must be made explicit, and their functional as well as their geographic “boundaries” must be identified and dealt with in a more global and systematic way.

n Adaptation and mitigation activities will be ongoing in order to keep up with changes in the climate, from the global to the local level.

n Adaptation and mitigation activities will generate their own set of impacts on socioeconomic sectors well beyond agriculture, and governments must be prepared to both anticipate and respond to them.

n Policy-makers must beware of short-term, short-sighted solutions.

They must also beware of cost-benefit assessments that do not include non-quantitative analyses, such as considerations of social or cultural value conflicts that stem from multipurpose competition.

n Even if policy-makers are on the right track in regard to their development of strategies and tactics for adaptation, they not only have to choose the correct directions in which to move, but they also have to be concerned about the rate of change in the implementation of their policies. American humorist Will Rogers once remarked

“Even if you are on the right track, you can still be run over if you are not moving fast enough.”

n Prevention strategies and tactics must be pursued along with mitigation and adaptation.

n Do not wait for projections based on the output of scientific models of climate change to confirm what is already suspected or known about the impacts of climate trends, variations and extremes on food security.

AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science AFOLU Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use

AOC Areas of Concern BAU Business As Usual

CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research CI Conservation International

COP Conference of Parties

DMUU Decision Making Under Uncertainty DRC Democratic Republic of Congo

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FSIA Food Security Impact Assessment

GEF Global Environment Facility GHG Greenhouse Gases

GWP Global Warming Potential HLC High Level Conference HYV High Yielding Varieties

IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

ILEC International Lake Environment Committee Foundation IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

IRRI International Rice Research Institute MA Millennium Ecosystem Assessment MDG Millennium Development Goals MOD Manado Ocean Declaration

MSY Maximum Sustainable Yield NGO Non-Governmental Organization

PRECIS Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies

SWOC/T Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Constraints/Threats TECA Technology for Agriculture

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change WFP World Food Programme

WFS World Food Summit

WMO World Meteorological Organization WOC World Ocean Conference

WOC-CTI World Ocean Conference and Coral Triangle Initiative WRI World Resources Institute

SMALL-SCALE FARMERS IN AFRICA

Climate change affects everyone. But the worst hit will be hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, herders, fishers and forest-dependent people who are already vulnerable and food insecure.

©FAO/X. Van Der Stappen

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES

The relationship between climate and food security is obviously not a new issue. In Rome in 1974, for example, the United Nations convened a now- famous World Food Conference under the guidance of the UN FAO. It reminded governments of an urgent need to focus on existing and yet-to- emerge food security and related issues. Thirteen years later (1987), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) convened an international symposium to address concerns about climate, weather and water impacts on agricultural production. The very same issues of concern to policy-makers today were addressed by scientific researchers then:

The International Symposium on Climate and Food Security … recognized three critical world problems: that several billion people often lack the most basic human need – food security; that population growth and the need to improve living standards are putting severe pressure on the soil and water resources that sustain all food production;

and that unfavorable weather and climate remain the most frequent cause of crop failure – sometimes leading to widespread distress and even famine.

It also recognized a new factor: the growing scientific consensus that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is likely to cause a global climate change – an environmental change on a scale unprecedented in human history – with the potential for great impacts, both beneficial and harmful, on food security.

The overriding concern was: how can scientists help farmers exploit favorable agro-climate patterns and adapt to or protect against unfavorable climatic trends.

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In the never-ending struggle to provide people everywhere with the assurance of food security, we certainly need to understand more. But the participants also emphasized the need to apply what we already know – by devising and testing better methods of conveying to farmers the timely and practical agro-climatic information they need.

These were the goals and vision of M. S. Swaminathan, Roger Revelle, and S. K. Sinha – the three eminent scientists who made this meeting possible (Burns, 1989)

In the 1970s no attention was paid to mitigation [at that time mitigation meant the softening of the impacts of an event or process], and concerns about adaptation to climate were centered on weather extremes and climate variability from season to season and year to year to address the crucial aspect of food production stability, one of the pillars of food security. By 1996, however, the World Food Summit (WFS) recognized that the resource base for food, agriculture, fisheries and forestry was under stress and threatened by problems such as desertification, deforestation, over fishing, loss of biodiversity, inefficient use of water, and climate change. Mainly under its commitment three, the WFS made a number of explicit references to the dominant role of climate fluctuations in food supply as one of the main factors interfering with sustainable increases in food production.

Hundreds of meetings and thousands of papers, many of which were focused on climate and the search for food security, have already appeared on societal adaptation to climatic, environmental or societal changes. With such an extensive background, the challenge facing those searching for coping strategies to endure climate change (i.e. global warming) may weigh more heavily on deciding which existing adaptive strategies to pursue rather than on developing yet-to-be-identified unique and untested ones.

In reality, the concept of “food security” has been interpreted in many ways. An FAO report noted that there are more than 200 interpretations of the concept (FAO, 2003; [http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y4671E/

y4671e06.htm]). This report defined food security as follows:

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary

needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Household food security is the application of this concept to the family level, with individuals within the household as the focus of concern (p. 3).

A cursory view of many regions in the world, however, reveals that no matter how one defines the concept of food security, food security as a goal to assure an individual’s access to food and nutrition has not yet been realized to any significant extent. This reality has become obvious with the increasing use of and reliance on the term “food insecurity”.

Over the decades, the concept of food security has continued to evolve with new twists and turns in its meaning appearing every few years or so. These food security evolutions can be pictured metaphorically as an

‘artichoke’. At the heart of the artichoke is the core of the concept of food security, access to adequate nutrition for physical and mental well-being, which always remains the same, but over time different uses of the concept by different users (both individuals and organizations) in pursuit of a wide and varied range of variations on the food security theme to suit their goals and needs add layer upon layer of outer leaves to the center of the artichoke.

Today’s concern about climate change has added features to the issue of food security: The acute perception that natural resources are finite (a concept sparked in the late 1960s after the photo was published of planet earth alone in the universe’s sea of darkness); that human activities that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere must be controlled; that adaptation to changing conditions is the most immediate concern for sectors of agricultural production; and that vulnerability to impacts varies greatly from population to population and can even vary in the same location from time to time.

Released in April 2007, the IPCC’s 4th Assessment appears to have provided the “tipping point” for governments and many corporations to accept that climate change is a real threat to societies and ecosystems.

The global climate has already warmed 0.74 ºC since the beginning of the twentieth century. Adaptation concerns are based on the identification of likely impacts of global warming at national, local and household levels and they are increasingly focusing on the development of both proactive and reactive coping mechanisms to soften, if not avoid, those impacts.

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The World Bank presents the importance of adaptation in the following way:

Developing countries, and particularly the poorest people in these countries, are the most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate variability and ongoing and projected climate change. Their economies depend heavily on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, a reliable water supply, and other natural resources. They are generally hindered by limited human capacity and limited access to technology and capital to invest in risk reduction… Thus it is imperative that climate change adaptation is not separated from other priorities but is integrated into development planning, programs and projects (World Bank, 2008).

Recently, unsustainable development practices for bioenergy production have been recognized as an additional threat and may have an impact on the goal of achieving food security. FAO, in its report on “Food, Energy and Climate: A New Equation” underlined the need to think of food, energy and climate as one interconnected issue.

For millennia agriculture supplied three things: food, fodder and fibre, and played a part in shelter too. Now energy has been added to the list, even if wood has always been used for that purpose. With oil prices near all-time high, governments are supporting the production of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesal from crops previously grown for food, fodder and shelter. This is helping increase the price of food.

(FAO, 2008; [ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/i0330e/i0330e00.pdf])

THE NEED FOR BASELINE DIAGNOSTICS

Policy-makers need information in order to make the most informed decisions possible. On a weekly basis, however, policy-makers constantly make decisions under uncertainty; that is, they typically do not have the luxury of having in-hand perfect information on which to base their decisions. With regard to the impacts of climate change on agricultural activities, considerable uncertainty remains about the intensity, duration, magnitude and location of impacts, but this uncertainty must not by itself be used as grounds for inaction.

The fact is that climate change-related uncertainties in decision making and Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU) related to food insecurity will likely always exist. This is true because of limitations in our ability to fully understand and therefore predict climate events. Such limitations may become more pronounced as the climate system warms and its behavior becomes increasingly less predictable.

Baseline data are key to an improved understanding of the agricultural impacts of a changing climate and of the rates of change at which those impacts appear. Slow rates of change, for example, provide time for preparation and response, while faster rates provide less time for such actions. Problems will always exist, however, with data, statistics, lack of carbon-adjusted statistics, difficulties in modeling countries’ “mitigation potentials,” and the still-not-very- well quantified risks of genetic erosion and loss of crop diversity, especially as they occur on-farm. Filling the gaps in baseline data, therefore, is an important aspect of adaptation and mitigation efforts for agriculture and food security.

To facilitate this undertaking, every government needs to undertake a comprehensive, two-pronged assessment of its country’s (1) vulnerabilities and (2) resiliencies (defines in this instance as adaptive capacity). Vulnerabilities seem to be relatively easier to identify than are resiliencies. For example, those mired in poverty – children, pregnant women, the infirm and the elderly – are already known to be most vulnerable to hazards and to food insecurity. The same type of assessment is needed for hazard-prone areas such as unstable hillsides, low-lying coastal areas, bushfire-prone areas, and so forth. Resiliencies can be either tangible (e.g. sea walls, effective state of the art early warning systems, available funds) or intangible (e.g. education, training, skills, awareness of risks, perceptive decision making). Assessments such as these can be extremely useful for identifying not-so-obvious vulnerabilities and resiliencies in a society’s socioeconomic sectors. As such, there are no targeted activities completed and/or in progress in preparing

“resiliency maps” for the vulnerable sectors.

An important aspect of resiliency mapping is traditional knowledge about food production and the nutrition efforts of the world’s farmers and herders. Their tactics and strategies had evolved long before recorded history for coping both with variability as well as extremes and even for coping with abrupt as well as incremental change.

A LIVESTOCK HERDER IN TÖV IMAG, CENTRAL MONGOLIA

The natural disasters, known as dzud and drought, affect Mongolia on regular basis causing deaths of millions of heads of livestock and damage significantly the country’s economy.

© S. Ramasamy

BASELINE

INFORMATION

IMPACTS

The IPCC 4th Assessment

The latest key findings of the IPCC regarding current research results on the state of climate change, its drivers and projections for the future include but are not limited to the following highlights (IPCC, 2007a):

n Warming of the climate system is now unequivocal;

n The rate of warming in the last century is historically high;

n The net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, due primarily to fossil fuel use, land-use change and agriculture;

n Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely (greater than 90 percent) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions;

n Long-term changes in climate have already been observed, including changes in Arctic temperature and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and intensity of tropical cyclones;

n From 1900 to 2005, drying has been observed in the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia;

n More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics;

n Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the twenty-first century that will very likely be larger than those changes that were observed in the twentieth century;

n Projections for the twenty-first century include a greater chance that more areas will be affected by drought, that intense tropical cyclone activity will increase, that the incidence of extreme high sea levels will increase, and that heat waves and heavy precipitation events will be more frequent; and

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n Even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized, anthropogenic warming and sea-level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks.

The IPCC 4th Assessment and food security

This IPCC Assessment addresses food security by discussing the foreseeable impacts on agricultural productivity and production in different regions around the globe. The report’s collective comments suggest that some areas will benefit from global warming, at least through a transitional period, though most areas will be adversely affected. Significantly, the assessment emphasizes that those areas that do benefit from global warming in the near to mid-term will eventually also suffer from declining productivity. Various parts of the assessment also reference changes in the hydrological cycle that will affect agriculture in general and food security specifically. Migrations forced by climate change (for example, excessive heat, increased evaporation rates, or prolonged drought-induced crop failures, or flood) will further burden the already stretched agricultural resources and food supplies of regions that have managed to sustain productivity.

While each region around the globe will have to develop its own adaptation, mitigation, prevention and response strategies, inhabitants of the African continent will likely be the most affected and most needful of resources, if they are to effectively respond to climate change:

Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change. The area suitable for agriculture, the length of the growing seasons and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease. This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition in the continent. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020. (http://timeforchange.org)

The IPCC’s 4th Assessment is the culmination of a process that began over twenty years ago in the late 1980s. Preceded by the IPCC’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd Assessments, the trends in greenhouse gas emissions and global warming’s likely impacts as noted in the 4th report of the IPCC are consistent with

trends that were reported in those earlier IPCC assessments, with each new assessment having further bolstered the evidence for human contributions to the naturally occurring greenhouse effect. Making a bad situation appear even worse is the evidence that the rates of several environmental changes, such as the melting of Arctic sea ice, have actually accelerated in recent years.

A climate change challenge for society:

riding the variability curve

The 4th Assessment clearly played a key role in the sharp, step-like increase in concern over the climate change issue after its release in 2007, in many ways proving to be the “tipping point” for policy-makers worldwide who truly began to take more seriously the climate situation after its release. Recognition of the IPCC process with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize served to enhance the influence of the 4th Assessment, especially with the broader public. Concern over climate change has sparked an unprecedented “rush to action.” Though deserving of such focus and concern, governments and other climate-, water- and weather-related scientific research and application funding agencies must beware, especially with regard to their response to this one climate change report, of the likelihood of “overshoot”; that is, agencies must beware of over-focusing on what has become the most popular and recognizable concept in climate reporting, “change,” and risk neglecting other important, less reported climate factors – such as variability from season to season, year to year, and decade to decade – that have often not been record setting anomalies but have none-the-less had serious consequences for societies and ecosystems. After all, the broad notion of climate change includes variability in the set of such climate factors as temperature, which will change at different rates; changes in the expected flow of the seasons; and changes in the timings, intensities and locations of precipitation.

Concern about the potential occurrence of an abrupt climate change tends to draw attention away from possibly substantial transformations in the naturally occurring variability of our existing, relatively well-understood global climate regime. Societies, their institutions and the individuals that compose them have always struggled to understand and forecast variability on various time scales, especially the seasonal and inter-annual ones, either to take advantage of good climate conditions or to prepare for adverse ones. This can be referred to as an attempt by societies to “ride the climate variability

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curve.” In any of the climate change scenarios set forth thus far, variability will continue; however, given that the future state of climate is uncertain, such variability may shift beyond the bounds of an anticipated range, resulting in unexpected climate scenarios. Precaution should be taken to compensate for possible upturns and downturns in climate variability in order to be better positioned to prevent or mitigate the impacts of these unknowns. The fisheries sector provides perhaps one of the most straightforward examples of this response to variability.

Fish populations vary from year to year, with some species exhibiting high variability in reproduction because of environmental factors combined with recruitment processes. A perfect fishery would, arguably, enable the fishing community to ride the seasonal variability curve’s ups and downs; however, forecasts are not good enough to allow for such a perfect scenario, so fishing strategies must include a range of management options such as Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), optimal yield and safe yield. Maximum sustainable yield is an attempt to eke out the maximum level of fish catches possible. For this management strategy, however, the risk of over-fishing or of a collapse of the fish population is high due to fish population dynamics and populations’

interactions with environmental variability. Optimal yields can be viewed as a compromise to split the difference between the risk-averse safe yield approach and the risk-taking MSY approach. Safe yields have the lowest probability of fishing pressures destroying fish populations, but it also provides the lowest level of potential catches. The management strategy for fisheries for a given place must reflect a level of caution (e.g. level of fishing effort), given the numerous uncertainties that can surround the exploitation of living marine resources.

A perfect forecast of variability a season or two in advance would allow farmers and other stakeholders to prepare well in advance for shifts in climate conditions. Such preparations might include lowering stocking rates on rangelands if drought is forecast; more or less stringent controls on fishing limits; planting shorter season grain varieties or completely shifting to better suited crops, and so forth. Without such perfect forecasts, however, skills in the form of education and training combined with existing “ordinary”

knowledge become necessary for effective management of climate-sensitive resources related to food security. Regardless, societies must not shortsightedly focus only on ‘change’ that might occur in an unspecified distant future, but must continuously improve their ability to cope with seasonal and inter-

annual variability as well as decade-scale fluctuations as the climate warms, altering the climate variability that we have become accustomed to in our experiences of the recent past.

Does climate impacts history have a future?

Most people tend to value present-day events and knowledge more highly than past events and knowledge and possible futures. Economists call this discounting; one euro in the pocket now is worth more than the same euro in the same pocket several years from now, according to this economic principle, because, put simply, people have to survive the present in order to participate in the future. The problem with this standard for valuation is that a considerable amount of usable knowledge exists in the records and folk wisdom of people from the generations that preceded ours. Learning about how climate, water or weather anomalies affected food security in the past and how societies coped or failed to cope can provide usable insights into how to respond to similar or analogous impacts in the future.

The problem is that many people (researchers as well as policy-makers) tend to believe that such historical information has become outdated because of scientific, engineering, or technological progress and because lessons about coping with disasters were learned. As a result, historical climate-, water-, and weather-related impact information, even information about recent impacts, is often neglected, even though such information could often provide context and guidance for present and future planning. The impacts of anomalies on food security in the recent past, for example, will possibly produce similar impacts in the near term. While speculating about future impacts, therefore, these historical accounts must be exploited in developing adaptation strategies to cope with these issues at local to national levels.

ASPECTS OF VULNERABILITY Ecosystem changes

Considerable attention has focused on the IPCC assessment process, which began in the late 1980s. What has been as important in a different way has been the recent release of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA).

The website for the MA fully explains its origin and importance (MA, 2005;

[http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/About.aspx]), though an excerpt here is useful:

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The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was called for by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000. Initiated in 2001, the objective of the MA was to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well- being and the scientific basis for action needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of those systems and their contribution to human welfare.

The MA has involved the work of more than 1 360 experts worldwide. Their findings … provide a state-of-the-art scientific appraisal of the condition and trends in the world’s ecosystems and the services they provide (such as clean water, food, forest products, flood control, and natural resources) and the options to restore, conserve or enhance the sustainable use of ecosystems.

Given the central importance of ecosystems to societal well being, some key observations about the risks associated with “tampering” with the sustainable functioning of ecosystems are instructive.

About 25 years ago a schematic diagram, reproduced in Figure 1, presented an idealized picture of a food production system.

The figure suggests that weather affects only crop yields; however, even at that time weather’s effect on many of the boxes in the graphic was well known.

Weather’s broader influence is suggested in another version of the graph (Figure 2), in which the box previously marked as “weather” is replaced by “drought.”

In fact, lines in Figure 2 can be drawn from the drought box to many of the boxes in the diagram – even the “tastes” box – as humanitarian food imports of wheat or yellow corn, not being the staple of the food importing region, have even been known to distort local food preferences. This situation has led to arable land being removed from traditional crop cultivation and given to cultivation of non-traditional, climate-sensitive food crops.

In addition to what is already known or what will likely be the impact of episodes of extreme weather and climate on food production and, therefore, on food security, it is reasonable to speculate on the major impacts that might accompany global warming. In truth, such speculation has already been happening for several decades. The most legitimate assumption is that every box in the above graphic would be affected if the weather box were replaced by a “global warming” box.

Beyond serving as interesting illustrations of the point, these diagrams also underscore what has been called the Four Laws of Ecology and the basic belief that in nature “you can’t change just one thing.” Taking this law into account,

Level/Distribution of Income Nonfarm

Income

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Acreage Planted Risk

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Income

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Level/Distribution of Income Nonfarm

Income

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Planted

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History Government

Performance Input Policy Investment

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Demand for Basic Foodstuffs

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POLICY SUBSECTOR Urbanization

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Research Yield of Food Crops

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F I G U R E 1

Schematic diagram idealizing a food production system (Glantz, 1987;

originally published by the US Department of Agriculture in 1984 -”sub- Saharan Africa: outlook and situation report, Economic Research Service).

F I G U R E 2

Schematic diagram in which ‘drought’ replaces ‘weather’ as the affecting parameter

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a key issue for governments is that of ensuring that billions of people around the globe with little purchasing power have access to and receive adequate nutrition (i.e. food security at the household level), while preserving the planet’s biodiversity, which is at the root of the sustainability of life on earth. While the interactions and values involved in this issue are complex, complexity, like uncertainty, cannot be used as an excuse for inaction or used to exclude elements of civil society from participating in planning for the climate change future.

One way societies can attend to the complexities of these ecosystemic issues is by paying attention to the value (and pervasiveness) of “usable” ordinary knowledge.” Lindblom (1979) referred to “ordinary knowledge” as:

knowledge that does not owe its origin, testing, degree of verification, and truth status to current distinctive [research] techniques but rather to common sense, casual empiricism, or thoughtful speculation and analysis.

It is highly fallible, but we shall call it knowledge, even if it is false. As in the case of scientific knowledge whether it is true or false, knowledge is knowledge to anyone who takes it as a basis for some commitment or action…For social problem solving, we suggest people will always depend heavily on “ordinary knowledge.”

As the saying goes, “knowledge is power. Sharing knowledge is empowering”;

the task of researchers and policy providers, therefore, is to assure the correctness of the knowledge base that is passed on to individuals in society.

Their task is also to become empowered by learning from local knowledge that had been garnered through trail and error over long periods of time.

The conclusion of the Millennium Assessment about societal well-being and ecosystems goods and services suggests that in order for ecosystems to have value or merit protection from destruction they must provide tangible goods and services to society. A provocative, new understanding emerges, however, when the two ideas central to the MA conclusion are rearranged to read as follows: in order for human goods and services to have value or merit protection they must provide tangible benefits for ecosystems’ well-being. In other words, human activities must be pursued with the sustained well-being of ecosystems as a key objective. Although composed of the same two ideas, these converse notions for the new millennium and a changing climate would yield very different outcomes for both societies and ecosystems.

B O X 1

A PRECAUTIONARY NOTE ON DEFINITIONS

Discussions about climate variability, climate change, climate extremes and the impacts of each on societies and ecosystems are filled with such terms as coping, capacity of response, vulnerability, resilience, adaptive capacity, sensitivity, adaptation, mitigation and - rarely these days – prevention. An important (troublesome, actually) problem with the concepts typically used in climate change discourse was, however, analyzed by Latin American researcher Gallopin (2006). He noted the following:

The terms vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity are relevant in the biophysical realm as well as in the social realm.

In addition to being terms in colloquial language, they are widely used by the life sciences and social sciences, not only with different foci but often with different meanings…Sometimes the concepts are used interchangeably or as polar opposites…

This plurality of definitions is possibly functional to the needs of the different disciplinary fields… but sometimes it may also become a hindrance to the understanding and communication across disciplines.

Gallopin (2006) went on to “attempt to highlight the fundamental attributes of the three concepts and to identify the conceptual linkages between them.” Still, the reality is that popular usage of these terms and other synonyms will rule the day, regardless of how hard academic researchers seek to clarify their meaning [NB: it is important to note that the UNFCCC and the IPCC do not use the same definition of such a central concept as “adaptation” [(Pielke, 2003; www.climateadaptation.net/docs/

papers/pielke.pdf)]. This is the situation with which researchers and decision makers will have to live and, more importantly, of which they must continuously be aware.

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A FARMER IN THE MOUNTAINOUS AREA OF THE VALLEY OF GUILIN IN GUANGXI, CHINA

Mountains are early indicators of climate change. Extreme events are likely to become more common and more intense in mountain areas, threatening the livelihoods of both mountain people and those who depend on mountain areas for water, food and other resources.

©FAO/B. Giorgi

Vulnerability patterns

Global statistics, like statistical averages, are useful for a wide range of purposes. For example, researchers talk in terms of the global average temperature having increased by 0.74 ºC since the beginning of the 1900s.

This is doubtless a useful piece of information to alert people that the global atmosphere is on a warming trajectory; however, it only represents a global average of regionally warmer and cooler locations worldwide. Yet, national policy-makers need regional and local information in order to make policy decisions relevant to their citizens and their country’s climate- related hazards. The same problem exists with demographic statistics.

Global averages and global rankings using vulnerability indices for food security, for example, are useful for some purposes but may not be useful for national policy-making purposes associated with climate change-related adaptation, mitigation and prevention. National policy-making, on the other hand, requires country-specific information, such as demographics as who and which regions are most at risk to climate variability and extremes, much of which is already available but may not be readily accessible or in a centralized location.

As argued elsewhere, who is vulnerable to climate variability and extreme climate, water and weather events is generally known, and this knowledge can be directly correlated to the most likely victims of climate change.

However, a breakdown provided by socio-economic and livelihoods groups, by geographic area, by farming systems or by sub-sectors will further help policy-makers to identify at-risk groups. Of special relevance is the state of the world’s crop diversity, as it plays a major part in adaptation to climate change for livelihood measures.

Vulnerability is generally defined as a function of risk and exposure.

Vulnerability with regard to climate change implies that people are exposed to aspects of climate that are changing in ways that will either generate or increase risk, which generally implies a potential loss of something valued.

For food security, the risk is of poorer nutrition or reduced access to food supplies than would be expected under “normal” climate conditions. The capacity to cope with the risky situations under a given exposure to hazards (both natural and human induced) also shapes the pattern of vulnerability. As often is the case this capacity is weak in the part of the world that suffer from food insecurity either intermittently or chronically.

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Resiliency patterns

Resilience, which has several definitions but generally refers to the ability of a society to “bounce back” after suffering an adverse impact, is sometimes viewed as the opposite of vulnerability, but it really isn’t. The impression that these are opposing terms derives from the mistaken idea that resilience entails a fundamental robustness, whereas vulnerability suggests fragility. However, is the ability to ‘bounce back’ to a condition that was unsustainable or unsound to begin with really the resiliency societies or groups should strive for after an adverse impact?

Does such a situation really demonstrate a fundamental robustness? Or is true robustness of a people represented by their ability to ‘bounce back’ from adversity to an improved condition over the one that had previously existed?

Resiliency viewed as the ability to “spring back” from and successfully adapts to adversity, is also used to indicate a characteristic of resistance to future negative events as commonly referred in human stress related psychology and strategies at personal, organizational and leadership levels in business and management field. The IPCC (2007a) defines “resilience”

as the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for self-organization, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change.

Resiliency can also be defined by a capacity to cope successfully in the face of significant future risk. Mapping such a capacity to cope in a country is as important as mapping vulnerabilities to climate variability, extremes and change because such baseline data facilitates an understanding among planners and policy-makers of where risk is most critical.

As described on a management oriented website (AlphaThink Consulting, 2003), resiliency maps are already undertaken for individuals.

Essi Systems’ Resiliency Map will help you explore your resiliency demands, assets and current levels of functioning. The Resiliency Map pinpoints your strengths and vulnerabilities, detects areas of caution and strain, and helps you chart new strategies for enhancing personal health and overall performance.

[http://alphathink.com/Frame-944278-servicespage944278.html?refresh=

1193338038490]

Such narrow-scale mapping could be used to evaluate a household, village, region or country’s ability to recover to near “normal” or improved food security conditions following an adverse impact.

Rates and processes of change

Regarding adaptation to global warming’s impacts on agriculture, fisheries, forestry, health, public safety, and food security, some of the most important factors are the expected changes to the rates at which various key aspects of climate change – rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, cloudiness – and at which evapotranspiration, the process by which moisture is exchanged between the atmosphere and vegetation and soils, occurs. If the rates change incrementally and societies are aware of those changes, those societies may be able to adjust human activities accordingly. Within limits, some ecosystems will likely also be able to adjust to incremental changes. If, however, the rates of change are too rapid to be viable for adjustments like shifting agricultural practices, changing crop rotations, developing new fodder regimes for livestock as grasslands dry out, then societies will be unable to escape with minimal impacts to their climate-sensitive activities and to the ecosystems on which those activities depend.

Virtual water and ghost acres

All reports on the hydrologic cycle suggest that the cycle will intensify as the atmosphere warms, with some suggesting that the cycle could yield about 15 percent more precipitation per annum. At this point, however, conjectures based on global circulation model output are little more than speculation and educated guessing, not yet reliable enough to predict with any accuracy where the precipitation would fall, how it might fall, or when it will fall.

Paradoxically, these reports also suggest that water scarcity in the next couple of decades is highly probable, with extreme shortages already appearing in various locations around the globe. As changes to the global water cycle become more pressing, policy-makers will have to scrutinize more closely where their limited water supplies are going and what they are being used for.

The concepts of virtual water will become more and more relevant as these cycles continue to change.

Virtual water is calculated in terms of the water that is used to grow crops that are exported to (or imported by) other countries. According to

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the concept, water used to grow flowers in Kenya, for example, is actually calculated as supplemental water supplies of the countries that import those flowers. In this manner, Kenya’s water resources are not being used for its domestic food and energy needs. As another example, a country that imports wheat instead of producing it on its own soil is, in essence, borrowing water supplies from another country’s water supply that had been used to produce the wheat. Governments around the world must reevaluate both their water and food balance demands and supplies in terms of ‘virtual water’.

Understanding the notion of ‘virtual water’ can enable a government to better understand where its finite water resources are being consumed and for what purposes.

Similarly, the concept of ghost acres (or ghost hectares) was developed several decades ago. It was used to explain that food imports by Country a relied for those imports on the agricultural lands of Country B. In the same way, the “Green Revolution” also provided ghost acres in that the use of fertilizers and irrigation enhanced agricultural productivity and overall production from beyond what the land might have been able to provide in its natural state (Lang and Heasman, 2004). The notion of ghost acres has also been applied to protein taken from the sea, which serves to supplement the protein produced on the land. A country such as Japan, for example, would require several times more farmland than it has in order to produce an equivalent amount of protein to replace the amount it takes from the sea. The notion of ghost acres also applies to a country’s food imports as well.

Global warming and disappearing seasons (as we’ve come to expect them)

The disappearance or even the change in the overall characteristics of a season (i.e., seasonality) should concern everyone. What else might change, related to changes in the seasonality to which people have become accustomed to in their regions? For example, over the past decade, the ice on various lakes in the northern central United States was no longer strong enough to support ice fishermen and their equipment.

For years, the expected patterns of the seasons have been shifting almost imperceptibly. Those seemingly small changes have, over time, however, accumulated to become more and more visible, leading to seasonal flows in

different locations around the globe that societies have been accustomed to.

Winters have, in general, become drier and warmer in many regions, and spring rains now come less predictably, both in timing, in frequency and in intensity. Multiyear droughts in Australia and the southeastern United States have generated concern about the “aridification” or the drying out of these regions.

The disappearance or even substantial changes in the overall characteristics of the four seasons as they are expected should concern everyone. The problem is that over the past few decades, winters have in general become drier and warmer in many regions. Rainy seasons have become less so, not abruptly but incrementally over time. Both industrialized as well as developing economies and economies in transition live by the expected flow of the seasons, so no country will escape changes in seasonality with a warming atmosphere. Such changes will affect human settlements worldwide in ways that most communities are just beginning to consider.

For example, researchers predict chronic water shortages worldwide (as in the Eastern Congo), a shifting boundary between rangeland and farmland, recurrent and prolonged drought (as in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Australia and Southeast US), a potential increase in the number and frequency of famines and perhaps a shift in their locations, and a shortening or lengthening of local and regional hazards related to climate, water, and weather. Adaptation strategies need to focus on this high priority aspect of climate change.

An aspect of the consequences in terms of food security, specifically, of the impacts of global warming includes but is not limited to the following:

changes in the growing seasons’ length as well as the timing and amount of precipitation; changes in the snowfall season, the runoff season, the rainy season, the timing of flood recession farming, the hunting season, the fishing season, the water season, changes in the timing of outbreaks and increases in vector-borne diseases, rice farming following the replacement of saline water intrusion in rivers by freshwater after onset of rains ( e.g. Mekong River), extended seasonal food crisis because of long-lasting drought conditions (e.g. “Monga” in Bangladesh), and so forth. Speculation about the foreseeable impacts of changes in seasonality is virtually boundless.

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CHILDREN IN THE MOUNTAINS OF PERU

The world’s population is young, with nearly 2.2 billion people under the age of 18.

Children and young people have enthusiasm, imagination and abundant energy to undertake local actions to manage climate risks.